Originally posted by Maverick
Link won't open for me, can someone paste the text?
Young, calm, staring death in the face
Email Print Normal font Large font Thumbs up from a young hero ... Robert with his father, Mark, on one of his 1700 jumps in five years.
What [Robert] did was slip her into his lap and hooked up her harness and then told her that on the impact that he would take most of the impactLatest related coverage
Skydiver's bravery saves Aussie's life
Video: Skydiver's gallant act
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AdvertisementJano Gibson
August 2, 2006 - 12:36PM
A young skydiving instructor who saved the life of an Australian woman by embracing her as their plane nosedived and crashed into a tree was someone who "would sacrifice anything for anybody else".
"That's the way Robert was. He would sacrifice anything for anybody else. That was just his nature. He was probably one of the best kids you could ever meet," Robert Cook's distraught father, Mark, told smh.com.au today.
His son was one of six skydivers killed when their plane fell from the sky shortly after take-off on Saturday.
"Robert was loved by everyone and will be greatly missed."
The 22-year-old, who had accumulated more than 1700 jumps over five years, has been hailed a hero after he calmly told his skydiving trainee, Melbourne woman Kimberley Dear, that their plane was about to crash and he needed to embrace her so he could take the full force of the impact.
Kimberley, who works in the United States at a camp for children with disabilities, was one of only two people to survive the accident.
She remains in a serious condition in a Missouri hospital with pressured vertebrae, severe muscle tears around her spine, a broken pelvis and collar bone, many cuts and abrasions, concussion and severe bruising.
"What [Robert] did was slip her into his lap and hooked up her harness and then told her that on the impact that he would take most of the impact," Mr Cook said.
He said he had spoken by phone to Kimberley's father, Bill, who plans to attend Robert's funeral on Thursday.
"As [Bill] was standing next to [Kimberley's] bed today, he looked over to her as she was sleeping and he said she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen and that she is only here now because of Robert," Mr Cook said.
"He wants to come down for the funeral and explain to everybody at that time exactly what Robert did for her and if it hadn't have been for Robert she wouldn't have been here today."
Mr Cook, who was trained to skydive by his son, recalled times when the two of them would joke with new skydiving students about his son's character.
"We'd be walking out to the airplane [and] he'd have a first-time tandem student. I'd always say something like, 'Your parole officer called today,' or, 'Did you take your anti-psychotic drugs today?' We would go back and forth and have the students laughing."
He said skydiving was his son's true passion and that his son had decided to extend his university engineering studies so that he could skydive as much as possible.
"As long as he was in college, he could still skydive full time. If he had to go to work he wouldn't be able to skydive full time."
" He was a wonderful child and he will be greatly missed."
